It took me a while to find the two references to "Bernard Shaw" in the book, and it took me a while more to understand what was going on.

It turns out that in Chapter 8 ("Petronius' Satyrica and Gore Vidal'sThe City and the Pillar"), the author (Nikolai Endres) discusses the depiction of homosexual relationships between a young boy and an older man. When he describes the case of Jim in The City and the Pillar, he mistakes the name of the actor he has an affair with in the novel (Ronald Shaw) for that of Bernard Shaw. Thus, a rather unexpected paragraph follows, reproduced here:

Although it is simply a small typographical error that does not subtract from the quality of the chapter, let this be a warning to all my readers about the perils of the internet. And also a token of the type of chaff that the editor of the Continuing Checklist of Shaviana has to separate from the wheat.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

The article in question describes the natural beauty of one of Ireland's
"most mystical places,"Skellig Michael (Sceilg Mhichíl). The article also describes a recent visit to the site byStar Wars actor Mark Hamill,
who played Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy. Both Hamill and the author (Lucinda Hahn) seem to have fallen in
love with the place and, to add another preacher to the choir, Hahn quotes
Shaw's description of Skellig Michael:

No wonder George Bernard Shaw, following a visit in 1910, described
Skellig Michael this way: “I hardly feel real again … I tell you, the thing
does not belong to any world that you and I have lived and worked in: It is
part of our dream world.”

Of course, nobody ever thinks of poor people who cannot sleep a wink if
they cannot source their Shaw quotations - and alas, no source is provided. Luckily
for me, it didn't take long to find the source.

Apart from the beauty of the place, the words "dream world"
have certainly drawn the attention of many Shaw critics who have chosen this
letter to illustrate their appraisal of, for example, Shaw's views about
Ireland. Let us look at some of them, in no particular order.

Sally Peters, in herBernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman(p. 27-28), reminds us that Shaw was visiting his homeland and felt
"besieged by a strong sense of his own mortality." Peters also finds
reminiscences of "the hold of this fantastic rock on Shaw's
imagination" in the "strange outcroppings that surface in the
settings forToo True to Be
Good(1931) andThe Simpleton of the Unexpected
Isles(1934)."

"Upon this cathedral of the sea, the man who generally seemed a
stranger on the planet felt at home. Standing in the graveyards at the Skelligsummit,he recalled the summers of his early
years when Sonny roamed over the rocks and goat-paths of Dalkey, and gazed
across the blue waters to Howth Head; or had lain on the grassy top of the hill
above the bay - then raced down to the shore known as White Rock and plunged
into the waves. Sonny had been a product of Dalkey’s outlook: there was little
place for him in the bustling world where G.B.S. moved. But he breathed again
in the magic climate of this island."

A. M. Gibbs'sA Bernard Shaw Chronologydoes not provide us with any critical commentary, but reminds us that
the famous rowboat trip was only a consequence of having "failed to reach
them [the Skelligs] by yatch on the 16th." In addition, in Bernard Shaw: A Life(by the same author) reference is made to an earlier letter addressed
to Mabel Fitzgerald, wife of theSinn Féin MP Desmond Fitzgerald.
In it, Shaw remarks (p. 250-251) that "the magic of
Ireland is very strong for me when I see a beehive dwelling. Did you ever
make the pilgrimage to Skellig Michael? If not, you have not yet
seen Ireland." A few lines later, Gibbs quotes the letter to Frederick
Jackson (apparently still quoted in tourist information), and argues that
"this 'dream world' of ancient religious traditions and haunting beauty
was an essential component in the multifaceted Shavian image of
lreland."

I must agree with Gibbs. After all, we learn from Shaw himself that "an
Irishman's heart is nothing but his imagination" - or his dreams.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

This morning I was idling browsing Youtube for
videos that may be relevant to any of the playlists in the GBS Youtube Channel (subscribe, pretty please!).
After a few minutes I came across a short documentary video about Hearst Castle, the mansion built by William Randolph Hearst. In the description, it is said
that Shaw deemed this stately house "the place God would have built if he
had the money."

After searching my database for a few minutes,
I found that the quotation had indeed been pronounced by Shaw during the few
days they (he and Charlotte) were guests of Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies (24th to 27th March, 1933). In the
editorial material preceding a letter Shaw wrote to Hearst (in fact, an
inscription in Hearst's copy of What I Really Wrote About the War), Dan H. Laurence writes that Shaw, when asked by a fellow
guest what he thought about the building, replied: "This is the way God
would have built it, if He'd had the money." We are told that Shaw spent
those days "luxuriating in the indoor and outdoor swimming pools and
enjoying his proximity to the exotic animals and birds with which the
ranch was stocked." In addition, they were "surrounded by a bevy of
Hollywood starlets and intimate friends of Davies" (See Collected
LettersVol. IV, 1926-1950, p. 332-333).

However, other sources do not attribute the
quotation to Shaw, or at least attribute the same words to a different person.
Specifically, Howard Teichmann's George S. Kaufman: An Intimate
Portrait (New York: Atheneum, 1972), quotes the American critic on page 127 as having said "This is
what God could have done if He'd had the money." Kaufmann's words,
however, do not express his awe at Hearst's castle-like mansion, but rather at
the 2,000 pine trees that Moss Hart had transplanted to the once-barren land
he owned in Bucks County, Pa. The same story is reported in a 1977 issue
of People Weekly (7 Feb. 1977, p. 32).

For good measure, however, the above
attribution is, in turn, considered apocryphal by a letter to the same magazine
(published three weeks later, on Feb.
28). The letter,
signed by David A. France from New Hope, Pa., claims that it was "AlexanderWoollcott who, after inspecting the [Hart's]
gardens and "the Gertrude Lawrence Memorial Wing" snapped, "It's
exactly what God would have done—if He'd had the money."" The letter
provides no source for this, although the editor's reply to the letter concedes
that the author of the article (Kitty Carlisle Hart, Moss's wife) "had always associated the
quote about God with Kaufmann," "but it may well have been Alec. It
sounds like Alec."

Once again, an alleged Shaw quotation has to be
quarantined until a definitive source surfaces. Whatever the case may be, the
time the Shaws spent at Hearst's is worth recording as one of their most
remarkable international visits. GeoShaw material, in other words.